WORST BOSS! Let's have a competition (I think I have a "winner")

[underpants]

Present and past.

My "boss" is one of those people no one is really sure what they do. We found out while upgrading our accounting system that she actually does LESS than we gave her credit for.

We just started using this new system and today I find out that she didn't follow the express instructions I wrote out for her (a 1 minute job) before she left for a conference. Yes I had to tell HER how to do something and she has only been here for about 25 years.

Now one of the key functions is locked up and we can't fix it. I used to have the clearance to make the change in the old system but no more. I don't know her passwords to log onto the network and MIS refuses to open up her computer for the 1 minute I need to fix it.

:grr:

[commander bunnypants]

1. Bawhahahah

But remember what we did to my old boss last year?


DEMMAN

[sam sarrha]

2. i worked on "life support/flight critical" electronic equiptment, i did

260% more work than any other team member, with no inspection errors for 2 years, my boss was a black woman, the company had sent to anger management 3 times. she was always on my case..always trying to distract me..she'd get drunk at lunch and it would get worse!! It was SOOO.. BAAAD.... that a fellow worker tried to recrute me into the KKK.:wow:

[arcane1]

3. my boss is generous, permissive, and super-cool, BUT....

she has a picture of Rumsfeld as her desktop wallpaper! :puke:

[WillParkinson]

4. Well sure...

But buy her a dart board for it instead!

[Catshrink]

23. She has a crush on Rummy?

EEEEWWWWWWWWW

[Interrobang]

5. My boss is just a nerd.

He continually forgets things he should remember, he's more-than-likely an adult ADD case (I know so many of them that I know 'em when I see 'em), and he's the type who does things like buying obsolete unneeded equipment on eBay because he thinks it might be useful and it's cheap. Then he complains about cashflow.

Oh, yeah, did I mention that I have two degrees and make $12/hr., no paid vacation, no benefits, no nothing?

[anti_shrub]

6. Ahhh, bosses...

My first real job was at the neighborhood convienience store. Yes, I was the real life version of Dante from Clerks. Anyway, the owner of the store was this control-freak lady who used to stand over my shoulder to make sure I stocked the eggs in the cooler correctly. I didn't realize there was a "wrong" way. :shrug:


Retail lends itself to having such interesting bosses too. I worked for 3 major electronics chains, one's out of business but the other two are 2 of the 3 "big chains".

My first retail manager was a spineless turd who would hide in his office when there were pissed off customers asking for him. His thing to do was to give his nametag to other people so they could take getting yelled at instead.

Next I went to a store run by a guy who was ex-Army, but he made it sound like he was Rambo when he was part of the medical staff. Not that its any less noble, but the guy made it sound like he was catching bullets with his teeth. He wasn't too bad to work for until they opened a Best Buy down the street from us and he became way obsessed with beating that store. It was no longer good enough to make your budget, we had to sell more than Best Buy because his male ego couldn't stand the fact that they were kicking our asses since they were positioned near a major shopping mall. He's also the guy who when I told him I needed to cut back work a few hours for school "perhaps you should adjust your priorites". He actually thought that working retail should be more important than school.

My last wacky retail job came when I left the above job to work at a store that had on site service techs. Fixing computers is something I like to do, and they offered to pay for A+ certification. I passed the cert, and they reneged on their promise to make me a tech. I must of asked them why they lied one time to many, because when the dumbass in the tech department (the same guy who they hired instead of moving me back there) was busted for making copies of CDs, I ended up being named. They had me painted as the center of some CD pirating empire or some crap. They gave me the option of quitting or getting fired, and when I chose to quit the manager tried to keep my last paycheck to cover the test they paid for my certification. Needless to say that without the fear of job loss over my head I ripped that idiot boss up one side and down the other. He even left the door to his office open (so the peons can hear what happens to ex employees you see) and he had to close it because I was yelling so loud at him. Damn that felt good, it was almost better than sex to be able to vent at such a complete jackoff.

[northzax]

7. testing- please ignore

thanks

[HawkerHurricane]

8. I've got you ALL beat

As a military man, my boss is BUSH! With CHENEY, RUMSFELD and WOLFOWITZ also in the chain, there ain't no way you've got a worse set of bosses than me!

[arcane1]

10. good point HH!

My boss at least gives half a shit if I live or die, so I can't complain!!!

hang in there!

[trotsky]

11. Contest over.

Damn, HH, you win going away.

[sam sarrha]

18. I salute you, and i will never feel worthy to compain again...

[geniph]

24. You win, Hawker

no contest!

[Lady President]

9. My worst boss

I've had quite a few so-so bosses, but I'll share about the worst. She started out very nice, but kept us in line which I liked because I hate bosses who let a select few do nothing while the rest of the employees are glorified slave labor. Six months later, she started having an affair with a material handler who worked with us. She ended up assigning me the worst projects because I wouldn't babysit her four kids who were all under six years old or answer my home phone at all hours when her husband would call looking for her. In general, I don't care at all about co-workers' private lives, but don't inconvience me with that nonsense. The company went bankrupt before she actually fired me which in retrospect was lucky. Give some people a little bit of power...

[radwriter0555]

12. PAM. I had a boss named PAM when I worked for a movie studio

back in the day. PAM was the person that licensed ALF, that stupid puppet on teevee, when he had a series. We would review applications for cos that wanted to license Alf, for toys, marketing, etc. We had to enforce how he looked, of all things! That was fun, actually.. But PAM wasn't.

She screamed all day long. She swore, cussed, yelled, ranted, slammed, threw things and was a wretched human being. Not just to me, but to vendors even... the final straw was when she was sitting in her office, about 25 feet down the hall from my desk, and SCREAMED down the hall for me to come running. So I run. I stand there for at least five minutes as she ignored me, and then she says, 'hand me that folder', which was 2.5 feet away from her, on the floor.

Ack.

I quit that day.

Then, I used to work on the teevee show Moonlighting. During the last season, a horrible woman named Sheryl Main was the music producer for the show. She was square. I mean square shaped. She was unattractive, loud, rude and quite unpleasant.

As the show was running down, we all knew it was the last season. Sheryl grew to hate me because a fellow she had a HUGE crush on found me more interesting, but I just wasn't interested. She started cursing me under her breath, and when no one was around, she would say things like "Why don't you just leave?" and "Why are you still here?" Just cruel things... I learned later that never really worked in hollywood again, except as a temp secretary at another studio.

I was a weak person then... I took the crap that people dished out. Obviously we don't play like that any more and I just tell people to fukc off and don't let them have ANY power over me EVER.

[geniph]

25. Radwriter, have you ever seen Swimming With Sharks?

sounds to me as if you've lived it!

[Festivito]

13. As a programmer I was ordered not to "computerize."

There was fear I might come up with a better system sooner than the "big project." And, he blocked my transfers, even tranfers to promotions, and ordered me not to talk with the Personel department. I left the company. And that manager's once meteoric rise, fastest in the company, suddenly inexplicably ended. Who knows.

[TrogL]

14. Let me get my work done

I had one boss who constantly lurked around my office and/or would call me into his office multiple times a day to make sure "everything is OK".

Problem is, I do systems analysis and coding for a living and if my train of thought is interrupted several hours work can go down the drain.

I finally moved my office into the server room and changed the locks.

[nini]

15. a former boss of mine..

started having an affair with a girl on my team. Both were married (him for the 3rd time).. Anyway.. didn't really care about what they were doing until he started giving her assignments that should have been mine since I had the most seniority and we were on 'bid' positions being is was a union/govt. job. He'd put her in these jobs so they could be by each other while :eyes:

I didn't realize it at first as many times we would be sent to do other jobs if our particular task didn't have enough work. One night I'm out unloading a truck while the princess had her ass sitting down in the airconditioning doing MY job that she had never even qualified for.

Ok off to complain to the union steward.. Boss is talked to and he tells them that I'm just pissed off because he turned down my 'offer' for a little after work fun.. PUHLEASE the guy was a total turd.

The hoochy girlfriend got wind of it and accidentally swung some stuff close enough to me to hit me in the head if I hadn't ducked. Would kick my chair when she walked by etc.. I went screaming at him to tell her to f'ing stop it that he needed to control the work environment since it was his job.. He went to his boss and turned me in for being out of control.. It went round and round and 'luckily' I was in a car accident about 2 weeks later and got the hell out of that job due to the injuries.

She got knocked up, both divorced their spouses - he was demoted - moved to another office about 50 miles away. The marriage lasted less than a year - hahah

I ran into him at a retirement party and the pathetic piece of crap had the nerve to come over to see how I was doing. I made sure he knew I had a wonderful job and was making far more money than I would have if I had stayed where I was. I then asked him how he was managing to pay out all that child support to the 3rd and 4th wives after his demotion! He didn't like that for some reason :-)

[mreilly]

16. The guy who hired me...

... was the worst boss I ever had. He was the director of IT. When I interviewed with him, he seemed like a great guy; friendly, upbeat, etc. As soon as I got hired the Dr. Jekyll mask came off. He was petty, whiny, dictatorial, and would stand behind me watching me work. I'm in IT and it can be a pretty intense, stressful career because when systems go down the whole company is affected. He would come in ranting and raving about problems and demand explanations rather than allow me to get to work fixing the issue. When I was finally permitted to get cracking he would nag and hound me with requests for updates. He would come in my cubicle and pull me OFF THE PHONE (rapping frantically on my cubicle desktop to get my attention, of course) to give him an update when I was ON THE PHONE with the support tech trying to get it resolved! So many times I envisioned punching his lights out, visualized my fist connecting with his nose, seeing his head whip back and his eyes gape open in shock that it the fantasy a life-preserving retreat for me.

Any system outage was always made ten times worse by his harassment, and as a result I found it necessary for my mental survival to NEVER come to him with any problems or tell him anything was going on until after I fixed it. That's a sad commentary on his managerial skills; he drove people away.

Some managers get heated during tough moments but are OK when things calm down. Not this guy. He was a jerk all around. One Friday evening at the end of the day I walked past his office as he was locking it up to go home. Feeling generous, I told him to have a great weekend. "Yeah," he replied, without any "You too," or even "Take it easy." Jackass. I hated working with him so much that I considered calling some recruiters several times and beg them to "get me out of here." This was back when IT recruiters might actually land you something.

Nine months of misery went by, and I became aware that he hated and feared HIS boss, and was on the lookout for another job. We all hoped and hoped to see the last of him and then the day came when he erupted at his boss and stormed out of the company forever (how professional, eh?) We were pulled into a meeting with the CEO and President who told us that he had left and wouldn't be coming back. All of us kept a straight face, but inside we were grinning like monkeys and doing cartwheels. I drove out of the parking lot that night whooping like an Indian and proceed to go home and celebrate with a six-pack of beer. The following Monday when I drove into work the knowledge that I would never see this boss again (or if I did bump into him in public I could feel free to cuss him out since he was on the outs with management and wouldn't tell them I had been rude to him) made me feel like a kid waking up on Christmas morning.

His replacement is everything he was not: patient, kind, and respectful (and I must admit, she's a woman who is rather easy on the eyes). When system problems arise she tiptoes out of the server room and lets me get right on them. She baked a cake for my son's birthday. She secured raises for my department. The memory of the old lousy boss is a fading, dark one, fortunately: he was done in by his own lack of dignity and professional courtesy, so I find it ironic that what made him such a crappy boss also made him walk out in a huff.

[sangha]

17. I had the 2nd worst boss possible

after Hawker Hurricane.

My ex-boss once complained that I fixed something "too fast". He logic was I couldn't possibly have done it right and that quick. He couldn't point to anything that was wrong except to say "too fast". The response I wanted to give was "I'm not too fast, but you're a bit too drunk"

The previous ex-boss forced me out because I wouldn't commit fraud for him. So, I found a job that wasn't in the WTC. Thanks to that bastard, I'm still alive.

[ZenLefty]

19. Mine was fired for embezzlement

Actually, all my managers at Pizza Hut ended up getting fired. I survived through five bosses, and the sixth one who let me go ended up getting fired herself. :D

The embezzler had a psycho ex-husband who tried to kill her my first day on the job. I show up, there's bullet holes in the glass and the cops are there. Sure, he's a scumbag, but after getting to know his target I started to understand how he felt.

She was very mean to everyone. She would scream at people with no provocation. Fire people on a whim. And if you so much as put one extra pepperoni on a pizza, you would get screamed at in front of everyone. And after she screamed at you, she would hang out with her asst. manager friends and would laugh about it. It was quite humiliating. Many of her victims left the store crying, a sad thing to watch.

She was caught embezzling $20,000, by means of creative accounting, and was fired on the spot. I ran into her a few years later, while I was in a bank. She had gotten a job as a teller in the bank. I had no idea you could get a bank job like that with an embezzlement conviction. :shrug:

Not the worst boss in the world, but she's up there in psycho land.

[Not a robought]

20. I was working on a film as an assistant editor

and the editor was my boss.

I wasn't making what I was worth but I wasn't paid newbie rates either. I had heard from others on management level whom I befriended that he tried to negotiate a higher weekly salary for himself by trying to take $500 away from my weekly pay. The producers wouldn't allow this to happen.

Naturally this built up resentment between us. Him to me because I was withholding $500 of weekly pay he thought he was entitled to and me to him for his wanting to take bread out of my mouth.

The tension didn't dissipate. He tried to pile on numerous problems and more tasks for me to deal than there are hours in the day because he wanted to get rid of me in favor of a female assistant that he could gawk at.

He got his wish. Within a few months, I was moved out of that position and after a short hiatus, the producers took me on board to help with the management of the film's post-production.

So in effect and to great regret and pain to that editor's ego, I became his boss. :evilgrin:

[GOPisEvil]

21. Bad boss habit...

I had a boss, who aside from being a nice person on the whole, was a MAJOR procrastinator. She had this habit of letting assignments sit unattended until the due date and time, then asking me or one of my co-workers to drop everything and handle it. :grr:

[annonymous]

22. I had a boss who was the bitch queen from hell.

This was a woman in a male dominated field (engineering) who thought any woman in the office was competing for her job. This woman was from Eastern Europe so people thought she was descended from Vlad the Impaler. I was her secretary so I really got it bad. She liked to play mind games and was really into humiliation. One of her favorite tricks was having her victim sit in a small chair while she used one of those executive office chairs. My way to counteract this was to sit on the credenza in her office so I was at eye level. She really stressed me out with her constant nitpicking and insults. She would criticize what I wore and even what I ate.

I got revenge on her because I was in charge of the timesheets and did data entry. The timekeeping system was set up so you could not take overtime the same week you took leave. This meant any time she took off the same week she worked overtime would not get entered. It had the effect of giving her a lot of vacation time she had to use up before the end of the year. Never make an enemy of the person you does your timesheet.

[Catshrink]

26. Wow -- What horrible stories you all have...

mine seems tame. I had a boss who was a control freak. I was teaching technical adult education classes and, when she came to evaluate me, said I used too much humor in my presentations. The class loved it and my ratings from them were always very high.

She tried to write me up for reading the newspaper in the lunchroom when there were other people in there. They were watching the news on TV so what's the difference. I made a real stink when she gave me the write up and her boss and HR told her to back off.

I could go on forever about her but the tragic thing is that she had two kids ages 8 & 12. She wouldn't let them make their beds because they didn't do it right. How scarred they must be.

I'm not, I got the hell out. She ended up being promoted.